Paris Exhibition: 100 Years of Surrealism

“Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality,” André Breton wrote in his First Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. A major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou picks up this mantle to mark the centenary of the Surrealist movement. Designed like a maze radiating from a central ‘drum’ housing the original manuscript of the Manifesto – an exceptional loan from the Bibliothèque nationale de France – the exhibition unfurls both chronologically and thematically.

Structured into 14 sections that evoke literary figures who inspired the movement (Lautréamont, Lewis Carroll, Sade et al) and the poetic principles that structured its imagery, the exhibition presents the movement’s iconic works from major international public and private collections, such as Personal Values by René Magritte, The Song of Love by Giorgio de Chirico and The Great Forest by Max Ernst. These works are presented alongside works by women Surrealists Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Ithell Colquhoun, Dora Maar and Dorothea Tanning. In collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, many Parisian galleries will be devoting exhibitions to Surrealism, while a map of Surrealist Paris will invite people to stroll in the footsteps of the artists.

September 4-January 13

www.centrepompidou.fr

From France Today Magazine